Ed Lynskeys Favorite Noir Fiction List
Explore Ed Lynskey's top picks in noir fiction with this curated list of must-read books. Discover gripping tales, dark atmospheres, and hard-boiled classics favored by a true noir aficionado.
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The Postman Always Rings Twice
by James M. Cain
The bestselling sensation—and one of the most outstanding crime novels of the 20th century—that was banned in Boston for its explosive mixture of violence and eroticism, and acknowledged by Albert Camus as the model for The Stranger. The basis for the acclaimed 1946 film. An amoral young tramp. A beautiful, sullen woman with an inconvenient husband. A problem that has only one grisly solution—a solution that only creates other problems that no one can ever solve. First published in 1934, The Postman Always Rings Twice is a classic of the roman noir. It established James M. Cain as a major novelist with an unsparing vision of America's bleak underside and was acknowledged by Albert Camus as the model for The Stranger.
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Double Indemnity
by James M. Cain
ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME • James M. Cain, virtuoso of the roman noir, gives us a tautly narrated and excruciatingly suspenseful story in Double Indemnity, an X-ray view of guilt, of duplicity, and of the kind of obsessive, loveless love that devastates everything it touches. Walter Huff was an insurance salesman with an unfailing instinct for clients who might be in trouble, and his instinct led him to Phyllis Nirdlinger. Phyllis wanted to buy an accident policy on her husband. Then she wanted her husband to have an accident. Walter wanted Phyllis. To get her, he would arrange the perfect murder and betray everything he had ever lived for.
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The Last Good Kiss
by James Crumley
C.W. Sughrue, a Montana private eye, is hired to track down a failing author and winds up searching for Betty Sue Flowers, a woman missing for ten years in Haight-Ashbury.
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A Feast of Snakes
by Harry Crews
From the acclaimed author of such novels as "Blood and Grits" and "Childhood" comes a wildly weird and breathtakingly original visit to the rural South that reveals the exotic subculture that erupts in all its glory at the Rattlesnake Roundup in Mystic, Georgia. "No number of adjectives in the thesaurus can do full justice to the dazzlingly bizarre nature of Crews' creations".--"Washington Post Book World".
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The Men from the Boys
by Ed Lacy
Marty Bond Was Rotten To The Core A few years back, he had been a famous cop in New York. Not a gentle or an honest cop. But he caught thieves and killers, and he was feared. Fired From The Force He became a house dick in a ratty hotel. He started sliding downhill fast, hitting the bottle pretty hard, procuring, protecting petty rackets. Then His Stepson Stumbled On A Killing and Was Almost Beaten To Death That put Marty back on the side of the cops in fact, if not legally.
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Cheapskates
by Charlie Stella
Former bus driver and ex-con Reese Waters wants to help his prison buddy Peter Rizzo, but his good intentions will land him in hot water with the mafia and the Nation of Islam, as well as New York's finest.
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Deadfolk
by Charlie Williams
Royston Blake is the head doorman of Hoppers Wine Bar & Bistro. He drives a Capri 2.8i and can walk down the street in Mangel knowing folks respect him. But now there's a rumor out that Blake's lost his bottle. Even Sal's heard the rumour. What's more, the Muntons are after him and the thought of ending up in the back of their Meat Wagon is almost too much to bear . . . Murder, mayhem and a chainsaw called Susan intertwine in this astonishing debut which marks the appearance of a funny and brutal new voice in British crime fiction.
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Caught Stealing
by Charlie Huston
A retired baseball player finds himself fighting for his life in this “fantastically hopped-up thriller [with] a wrong-man plot worthy of Hitchcock” (Entertainment Weekly, Editor’s Choice). “Wow! Brutal, visceral, violent, edgy, and brilliant.”—Harlan Coben In development as a major motion picture starring Austin Butler and directed by Darren Aronofsky Henry “call me Hank” Thompson used to play California baseball. Now he tends to a bar on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. When two Russians in tracksuits beat Hank to a pulp, he gets the clue: someone wants something from him. He just doesn’t know what it is, where it is, or how to make them understand he doesn’t have it. Within twenty-four hours, Hank is running over rooftops, playing hide-and-seek with the NYPD, riding the subway with a dead man at his side, and counting a whole lot of cash on a concrete floor. All because of some Russian hoods and a flat-out freakshow of goons. All because once, in another life, the only thing Hank wanted to steal was third base—without getting caught.
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Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s & 40s (LOA #94)
by Robert Polito
Presents six early classics of American noir fiction: James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice, Edward Anderson's Thieves Like Us, Kenneth Fearing's The Big Clock, William Lindsay Gresham's Nightmare Alley, Cornell Woolrich's I Married a Dead Man, and Horace McCoy's They Shoot Horses, Don't They'. A companion volume collects works of the 1950s. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
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Kiss Her Goodbye
by Allan Guthrie
Joe Hope is a loan shark's enforcer. When his wife and young daughter die, he'll stop at nothing to bring down the man responsible.
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Lemons Never Lie
by Richard Stark
Professional thief Alan Grofield turns down a heist, then has to defend himself and his wife against the attacks of the fellow thief he spurned.
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Hard Man
by Allan Guthrie
Still grieving over the death of his mother, tough Edinburgh ex-con Pearce refuses a job offer from the dysfunctional Baxter family to protect their pregnant sixteen-year-old daughter from her older, martial-arts-expert husband Wallace, until Wallace makes the mistake of killing Pearce's dog.
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Matala
by Craig Holden
National bestselling author Holdens latest work is a stylish yet harrowing tale of sex, deception, and international smuggling.
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Fright
by Cornell Woolrich
A man. A woman. A kiss in the dark. That is how it begins. But before his nightmare ends, Prescott Marshall will learn that kisses and darkness can both hide evil intent--and that the worst darkness of all may be lurking inside him in this breathtaking noir crime novel. Leisure Books.